***** Vol.3 Chap.2 Doctoral defense *****

Mark Hymann started his doctoral research four years ago when he came to Carnegie Institute. He was an excellent student and most of the time worked on his own, except for the weekly meeting with Frank, his supervising professor.

If only all the students I had would be like Mark, the world would be so much easier. Frank reminded himself as he walked into the room.

“So sorry. Got tied up momentarily.” He announced his arrival apologetically. This was obviously a little white lie and everybody knew it, but it would do. “Well, everyone in Mark’s doctoral committee is here, including me.” He cleared his throat.

“Thank you for coming. I see that we also have a good faculty representation from my department and other departments as well. Hi, George, nice to see you. Susan, nice to see you as well. Someone must have told the psychology and philosophy people about this defense.” He chuckled.

“Anyway, I thank the audience for coming today. We all know this is the final doctoral defense for Mark, who has done some very interesting work on the life of artificial creatures. So, let me turn over the stage to him and let him charm you on what he accomplished for the past few years and let you all judge if my money in supporting him was well spent or not. Mark?”

Frank liked to give a lighthearted introduction to ease the atmosphere and tension in the room. Otherwise, all the doctoral students would have a heart attack before and if not during the defense.

“Dear professors and members of my doctoral committee, distinguished guests, today, I want to tell you a little about my research. First, I want to say that this is more than research. What I have done is to develop a whole new species of artificial and intelligent life…”

Mark began his doctoral defense.

Just then, JB walked into the room. She found a seat near Frank and gave him a thumb up. He nodded in acknowledgment.

Frank had heard the speech so many times in the past that he slowly drifted off to his usual day dreaming. He glanced at Mark, who was explaining meticulously the research results, and relaxed.

Mark started his research with a swarm of artificial creatures and programmed the creatures not only with predefined skills and the ability to adapt but also to interact and communicate with one another collaboratively. An individual creature may be very simple, but the collective power was multiplicative of individual capability. Like ants. Like bees. He called this ‘colony power.’

For the doctoral research, Frank, as a good supervising professor would, challenged him to go further, beyond the obvious and posed the next barrier to him. What if the creatures not only could adapt and communicate but also evolve through mutation? What if the lessons learned from one generation could be saved and passed on to the next generation?

Mark’s eyes became wide open. He was silent for a good ten seconds, then nodded his head and took the challenge from his professor. Yes, what if the creatures could remember the lessons learned and be able to evolve? What an intriguing experiment that would be!

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His dissertation topic was thus decided four years ago.

In his program, adaptation and evolution worked together, allowing rapid advancement in the creatures’ development from generation to the next. Creatures with elementary skills rapidly developed the necessary enhancements based on the allowable capabilities originally programmed. While it was not possible to evolve beyond some bounds, the creatures could optimize their abilities rather rapidly for survival.

“So, in summary, I want to thank my supervising professor, Dr. Abdulcizi, for his patience and guidance throughout the past four years. I thank him for supporting me and guiding me to the completion of my doctoral research.”

Mark relaxed a bit.

“Again, I want to thank the audience for your attention in my presentation. This is what I have prepared for my presentation and I will be happy to answer any further questions.”

Frank reminded himself to come back to reality. Dutifully, he stood up and said, “At this point, we will take questions from the audience. I would like to ask the committee to hold their questions to the end and let the audience go first.”

“Susan, you have a question?” Frank pointed to Dr. Toulaski from the Department of Psychology.

“Yes, Frank, thank you. Mark, I was very intrigued by your presentation. I am also very interested in your experience with your creatures. At any time, did they display any aggression or submission as they interact with predators or one another?”

“Dr. Toulaski, this is a tough question to answer. As for aggression among the creatures, it was not in their programmed nature. But one time, I mistakenly programmed the predator as food. Of course, the creatures acted crazily because they were attracted to food but were at the same time diverted away from predators. But I recalled some cooperation among the creatures to defeat the predator. Perhaps that would be what you call aggression. I don’t know. Would you call that aggression?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

Good answer. Frank thought.

“Yes, Leon?” Frank pointed to Dr. Lucianos from the Philosophy department.

“Mark, what would you predict concerning the behavior of the creatures if they could indeed inflict harm?”

Silence befell the room. The questions were getting tough.

“My guess is that if the creatures could inflict harm, they would use that effectively to deter predators.”

“Yes, I suppose the defeat of predators would be necessary for survival. What about protecting food sources against your own kind? Would that not also be for survival also?” Leon continued.

The question was getting nasty.

“Well, perhaps. Since I had not explored that scenario, I would not know how to respond to that,” Mark replied sheepishly.

He shuffled his feet back and forth, looking a little nervous.

Good answer. Though Frank was getting uncomfortable as well.

“But you must have some idea? Don’t you?”

“I suppose it might be possible that if I ran the program enough times, and long enough, and if I introduced enough random elements into the program and allowed the creature sensors to be noisy enough so that a creature of like kind would somehow be regarded mistakenly as food, then there might be a remote possibility that the creatures might gang up by mistake and mistreat one of the other creatures as food. But I personally feel that such situations would be very, very, very remote.”

JB answered, shaking his head emphatically as if to help him make the point. He tried his best to hedge his answers.

Frank stood up, but before he could say anything, Leon took the opportunity and pressed further. “Then you are not denying that such a possibility exists?”

“Er…”

Mark’s face turned red and clearly scared out of his wits. He was at a total loss for words.

Time to step in.

“Leon. That was an excellent question and has tremendous implications. Our research at this point is still very elementary. We barely had time to test out the program and there are still many holes in the theory that we had to tidy up.”

A diversion.

“I wanted to remind the audience that these were artificial creatures that were given some basic routines or instructions in your terminology, and they only existed on Mark’s computer.”

Come on people, these are all artificial creatures in the computer memory! Of course, Frank did not say that aloud.

“If there are no further questions, I thank the audience for coming and I would like to ask that only Mark’s committee members remain in the room for the next phase of the examination.”

The rest of the defense was uneventful, as expected.